VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue: 114

Date: 26.05.2012

Contents:

1. Complete Mismanagement Of The Indian Economy

2. Petrol Price Hike Breaks The Back Of The Aam Admi

3. Aerostats Create Privacy Issues In Afghanistan

4. Keeping Alive Terror Benefits Departmental Budgets & The Terror-Industrial Complex

5. The Cartoon Controversy

6. The Presidential Race

7. Wheat & Milk Powder Piles Up As Nation Remains Starving & Malnutritioned

8. Indian Economy In a Mess

Complete Mismanagement Of The Indian Economy

On the back of the Finance Minister saying in Parliament at the end of the passing of the Budget, that austerity measures need be brought in, we have the Prime Minister during the function for celebrating the 3rd anniversary of this UPA-2 government echoing the same sentiment by saying we need to tighten our belts. Now as far as celebrating the 3rd anniversary of UPA–2 we need to ask Manmohan Singh whether a celebration is at all deserved or should they have not been mourning that their ordeal has not yet ended. But the point remains by parroting these statements that we need to tighten our belts and implement austerity measures we need to factually see what is achieved in terms of its impact on the economy. Why everyone is upset on the economic affairs situation is that the same scenario has been prevailing for inflation which first started pinching us some 3 years back. The same people the FM & the PM among other economic heavyweights in this government assured us that in another 6 months if not a year, inflation will come down. But nothing like that happened and inflation continues to remain stubbornly going its own way – up and up. Thus these palliative statements like austerity etc. are being made just for form’s sake and come another 6 months the same people will repeat the same statements. This clearly shows that there is no intent with this government to take any concrete steps to set right our economy. They are hopelessly incompetent and shameless in not admitting that on the economic front they do not have a clue of what is going on. Take the case of the White Paper presented in Parliament the other day on Black Money. Going by the content in the White Paper it highlights the ‘Black Day’ on which it was presented for all those who have been keenly wanting to pursue Black Money be it stashed abroad or at work within the country. The White Paper says nothing and given its quality of content, it is equivalent to toilet paper The same goes for the petrol price hike, the highest one-time rise in living memory. While the oil Cos. have been asking for a hike for past under-recoveries and the Petroleum Minister has been asking for a hike to compensate for the falling value of the Rupee, no one really knows why a hike was done now when international oil prices have lately softened. This is the kind of obfuscation which is characteristic of this UPA-2 government where nothing is backed with basic data. All decisions are taken based on convenience and political expediency and not for the benefit of the citizens of this country. With the country going through a bad patch on the economic front at the 3rd anniversary of this UPA-2 government, the emphasis was on political survival by trying to pull the Samajwadi Party closer into the UPA alliance and ensuring that the incumbent gaddis are not rocked, the aam admi be damned. The petrol hike was also implemented after the Parliament session was over and the anniversary celebrated.

Petrol Price Hike Breaks The Back Of The Aam Admi

Just the petrol hike leaving diesel and LPG is completely illogical given the argument that oil prices and under-recoveries demand a hike. The fact that petrol being a deregulated item and thus eligible for a price hike is again a contrived argument. The timing of the hike is also important considering that just the day before the UPA-2 government celebrated their 3rd anniversary of taking over the reins for ruling the country. The next day bang they hike the petrol prices by not a rupee or two but by Rs. 7.50 a litre. If this is not being irresponsible one should ask what is? Look at the behaviour of our Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy in this context. On Tuesday (22nd May) he makes a statement that oil price hikes are desirable and runs off to Turkmenistan and on the next day Wednesday (23rd) the ‘oil Cos.’ hike the huge petrol price. And on this the Congress party also claims that it was not consulted. Is this not like a child’s prank of doing mischief and then running away from the scene of action? Jaipal Reddy deserves what he got of almost being held by the ear and asked by the government to return post-haste to India. We need to remember that the petrol hike hits the aam admi in the gut first and foremost since most of the rich have switched to diesel cars and it is the man who rides the 2-wheelers and the lower end cars who is suffering or whose backs are being broken by the petrol price hike. During the last presentation of the Budget there was talk of a one time cess on hi-end diesel cars so that those buying SUV’s and the like could not benefit from the lower price of diesel. The car industry bigwigs made presentations and nothing came of the one-time cess and it was shelved. The differential excise duty that could have been imposed on diesel passenger vehicles of a certain capacity and above was also not implemented. Thus we know whom this government is favouring, the rich at the cost of the poor people. Thus let us be clear that any petrol price hike is against those who for their day to day living have to run about in their 2 – wheelers and the lower end cars and in no event affects the rich who go about in diesel powered SUV’s and the influential like politicians who ride cars in which the government fills the fuel be it diesel or petrol.

Aerostats Create Privacy Issues In Afghanistan

It is understood that Aerostats – 30 meter size hot air balloons are being deployed in the Afghan skies by the US & NATO commanders to be used for monitoring areas from the air and for collection of intelligence in Afghanistan. This is a follow-up of the drones which have randomly been killing innocent people along with the ‘supposed’ terrorists and militants belonging to the Taliban/Al Qaeda. Are there no privacy issues here? Would the US & NATO deploy such kind of devices in their home countries? NATO may claim that they have extensive CCTV coverage in their cities along with rigorous security in their airports and rail stations including body scanners. But this is not valid since in the majority of NATO countries there is a strong justice system and a vigorous public opinion which is available for moderating the excesses on intrusions of privacy. While in a country like Afghanistan this is being implemented without any consent of the local people and moreover by a foreign power which has no locus standii to intrude into the lives of the Afghan people. NATO may claim that in a country that they are at war with, these measures are legitimate. This is clearly disputed since the war against terror is illegal and has been declared so. Moreover NATO is working against a section of the Afghan people in collusion with a pliable government that of Hamid Karzai and hence it can in no case be justified as a war zone. Similarly, the intrusions of privacy can in no case be justified. This has also been the case with the drones that are being used and the data on civilians killed by these drones is being presented in a manner so as to show that it has been decreasing over the years to the current year, but they ‘officially’ still remain in the hundreds. How much of a hullabaloo is made in the West when even if tens of people are killed in terror attacks and even for that you have candle-light vigils and anniversaries in memoriam but for the poor civilian Afghans who get killed there is no such requiem. A clear case of double standards by NATO. It is therefore required that the deployment of aerostats be stopped and drones be discontinued from use in Afghanistan. If you have to fight, fight square and with some sense of equity so that the better man wins. Using aerostats and drones by NATO in that sense is a cowardly act.

Keeping Alive Terror Benefits Departmental Budgets & The Terror-Industrial Complex

The Western media orchestrates the support to the propaganda blitz against regimes which are inimical to the West like in the case of Syria now. The recent bomb blast which injured some 100 in Damascus is quoted by the Western media as ‘attributed to the Al Qaeda but with no confirmation yet.’ The Al Qaeda is the common bogey for the West to use and create a sense of fear among people which has been the pattern that we have seen ever since Iraq. This the West does not only do in the countries where they interfere but also within their own countries. After 9/11 the security checks at airports has gone up in rigour and now body scanners are commonly used in the US and are being introduced in the UK also now. Randomly over the last decade almost on a six-monthly basis one or the other plot attributed to the Al Qaeda has been ‘unearthed and the supposed perpetrators have been caught’ in the West which has essentially keep the ‘war on terror’ simmering in the minds of the citizens of Western nations. Even just prior to the recent 60 nation NATO conference in Chicago the US Homeland Security and FBI intercepted 3 terrorists who ‘surprise of surprises’ were local US citizens belonging to some ‘Black Bloc’ movement out of Florida and not the Al Qaeda. Similarly the bomber apprehended before getting into a plane in the Middle East on the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death anniversary with a bomb similar to the underwear bomber caught sometime back, turned out to be a CIA double agent who had penetrated the Al Qaeda network! These cases seem to be aligned to ‘manage public opinion’ in the West to persuade the war on terror to continue, which is otherwise flagging in other parts of the world. Just like the military – industrial complex was said to be behind the military interventions in all countries after the Vietnam war ending with the latest intervention in Libya by NATO so also it seems that this entity has morphed into a terror – industrial complex which has a vested interest in ensuring that terror remains uppermost in the minds of the people of the Western world. This will then feed then budgets for departments like Homeland Security and the industry which makes body scanners and the like. The easier way out of all this is for the West not to encourage mayhem in troubled countries and allow the local people and the ruling regime to deal with it. The last century or more has shown that the West whenever in their assumed knowledge has intervened in trouble-spots around the world more often than not they have been proved wrong and it has been at a massive humanitarian cost in the affected trouble-torn countries and at great financial and sometimes human cost to the West.

The Cartoon Controversy

The cartoon issue that has rocked Parliament and then the nation is essentially a matter that we need to decide whether textbooks should carry cartoons. It is felt that NCERT stretched discretion very fine when it included the particular Ambedkar cartoon in the political science textbook of Cl. X. The matter is not at all relating to Ambedkar and therefore the subsequent hullabaloo should have been handled as such. Cartoons have their place in certain media and textbooks is surely not the place to draw that smile or smirk. Textbooks particularly at the Cl.X and higher class levels and beyond should be serious and therefore they are called textbooks. When we tend to dilute the position of anything be it textbooks, history or whatever, we tend to be drawn into these rather unnecessary and infructious debates which grow into controversies. Our approach particularly in education should be like Caesar’s wife who is above any kind of suspicion or misdemeanour. This will retain then the purity of intent and get the message across to the students to remain focused on study and not frivolity. Thus if there had been no cartoon in the textbook in question, would all this have blown up in this manner? That essentially is the question that we have to answer rather than get caught up in the impropriety of it.

The Presidential Race

The Presidential elections true to our political scenario is turning out to be a messy affair. A cartoon which appeared in one of the national papers when the race was hotting up is truly representative of what the elections are turning out to be. In a competitive exam one of the questions was – How is the President of India elected? A candidate wrote – By the leaders of the political parties! By rights the President should be nominated by consensus and Abdul Kalam’s assuming the post was probably the best manner in which India obtained an exceptional President. This lobbying of candidates is rather demeaning not only for the candidates but also to the post of President. We should have avoided it or avoid it. The President should be a person of stature, character and have a personality which does credit to the country. In some quarters it is being said that we should have a Christian or tribal President. These are not criteria at all. People should remember that India essentially has no bias in persons of different religious persuasion or background from holding high office. We are a country which has had a Muslim as a President in Abdul Kalam and others earlier, a Sikh as Prime Minister in Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi as a Christian holding the ‘highest office of the land’ in controlling the PM! So let us keep the values high while choosing our next President.

Wheat & Milk Powder Piles Up As Nation Remains Starving & Malnutritioned

Record harvests of grain and the people of India are short of food or are at near starvation levels. The AFP photo of a labourer covering up rotting wheat at Khamano, a village some 40 KM. from Ludhiana carried today (20th, Sun) in the Navhind Times, Goa (and surely in some national newspapers) says it all. If you look closely at that the photo it kind of depicts a corpse stretched out on the rotting wheat with its skull on the right middleground. This must be the dead body of the aam admi, dead and left to rot with the wheat. Just like the grains, 15,000 tonnes of milk powder is stocked up in Maharasthra with no takers while our children suffer from malnutrition. Why cannot corporates be involved in these programs to reach such surplus food and nutrition items to far flung areas like in Orissa where pockets are at near starvation levels? The same way in tribal areas of Thane district in Maharasthra there were similar reports of starvation and chronic malnutrition, why cannot the milk powder that they need be sent from the piled up stocks. Can the Maharasthra CM not do a service to the tribals in his own backyard? Sharad Pawar as usual is trying to export it ostensibly to benefit the dairy farmers but actually traders who will buy the milk powder at rock bottom prices because there are no buyers at this point and then conveniently export it at remunerative prices.

Indian Economy In a Mess

March 2012 IIP down by 3.5%. The IIP has also shown that manufacturing of capital goods has fallen substantially which would mean that new investment is slowing down. Inflation at 7.4% in April 2012 is also restricting the ability for the RBI to cut interest rates and thus stimulate industrial recovery. Food inflation is soaring again on the back of a 61% price rise for vegetables. The Rupee has depreciated heavily, as a result of these factors and a soaring trade deficit, hitting close to Rs. 55 to the US Dollar and to almost the same levels as during the 1991 fiscal crisis requiring the RBI to intervene heavily so that it does not fall further. The stock markets are also in a tizzy and the Sensex has fallen below the 16,000 mark in a matter of days on the news of the Euro crisis and the inability of Greece to form a coalition government and pursue austerity measures. The FM on the back of these events stands up in Parliament and blames the world for India’s economic woes. When will we see someone in this government stand up and take responsibility by saying that inspite of the world in an economic mess look at our economic success story. Those days, like they say, will probably never come.

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VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:113

Date: 19.05.2012

Contents:

1. With A Raja Out, All Accused In Hi-Profile Corruption Cases Out On Bail

2. Point Counter-Point In US - Pak Relationship‏

3. Time To Close Down Air India

4. The Incident at the Mahi Army Firing Range in Ladakh

5. Sharad Pawar For Traders Under Guise Of Supporting Farmers

6. The Doublespeak on Iran by our Foreign Ministry

With A Raja Out, All Accused In Hi-Profile Corruption Cases Out On Bail

D Raja is also out on bail in 2G scam case, the last of those sent to Tihar Jail in the wake of the exposure of the scam. In the same manner in the CWG scam case everybody including Suresh Kalmadi is out on bail. Not only that Suresh Kalmadi as reported in the media is planning to contest an IOC position. Maybe those reports that he has gone woolly in the head may be true or it must be another big scam of pulling the wool over all our eyes of claiming mental issues to get out of jail. It is not that one objects to bail since that is a fundamental right of any accused and our judiciary is fully competent to decide on these matters but one need to know how our windmills of justice are churning. Are they churning fast or are they churning slow? As we all know that public memory is short and has it been the strategy of the incumbent government to send these famous (or is notorious, more appropriate) politicians, corporate honchos and bureaucrats and thus claim that they have taken immediate action on the accused and then after a reasonable period let them out. Once out of the public eye these cases as many before them can proceed at their own snail’s pace as Lallu Prasad Yadav’s case in the fodder scam in Bihar has been moving and effectively these accused go to leading a ‘normal’ life. It is not they should be incarcerated for life as said earlier but we, the common public, deserve to informed of the results of the process of justice and at what stage it is in. Justice in these cases, as in many others, needs to be speedy which has been the bane of our judicial system. Therefore it is time that these high profile corruption cases were passed onto a fast track court for a quick hearing and judgment. Point Counter-Point In US - Pak Relationship‏ The US is thinking that by negotiating with Pakistan that aid will be cut by US$ 50 Million for every US soldier killed with Pak connivance that they are smart. Pakistan as time will tell will countermand this by seeking similar compensation for their people killed by drones as has been rampant in the war zones of Pakistan and Afghanistan. With more numbers of Pak civilians and soldiers killed in such attacks compared to US soldiers, the US will find that they are forking out much more in aid than what they had promised. Like they say everything cannot always be measured in terms of money.

Time To Close Down Air India

The Air India pilots strike brings home the fact that it is no longer worth supporting the haemorrhaging airline into which another Rs. 30,000 crore was sunk recently. Air India like they would say is a ‘basket’ case, meaning hopeless in old world parlance. It would be more worthwhile in having the budgeted money allocated to Air India spent on other development projects that are starving for resource allocation. The national carrier banner may be put up for competition among domestic private airlines who will hold it on a rotation for maybe a 3 year basis. There are some newspapers who have been arguing that the Air India pilot strike is motivated by vested interests who want to benefit the private airlines. Is it not better to benefit our own private airlines than international airlines? Let the ones amongst us who are more efficient, grow. That is the way we should be thinking. The Congress party spokesmen are invoking the benefits of having Air India in the case of emergency needs like airlifting Indian diaspora abroad in the case of emergency like seen during the Kuwait invasion by Iraq or the recent airlift from Libya etc. For these once in a life time kind of situations we should not continue to support a bleeding Air India since with the airline industry, the way it is structured, there will always be cheap aircraft to charter in these emergencies.

The Incident at the Mahi Army Firing Range in Ladakh

The indiscipline at the Mahi firing range near Leh last week tantamount to a mutiny with the jawans having control of the armoury for albeit a short period of time and the run of the field guns show to what levels our Army has descended. When officers themselves do not comply with Army rules, in this case not having their wives around during the exercise, which led up to the confrontation between the officers and the jawans, then what can you expect. Such cases are part of a broader malaise within the Army & the Defence forces that anything goes encouraged by what is happening at the top echelon of the forces where the Army Chief gets embroiled in a date of birth scandal, Lt. Generals’ are courtmartialled and dismissed on account of scams relating to military land deals against which the scandals of yore like corruption within the Canteen Stores Dept. are but pale shadows. These incidents have sapped morale and the respect that the jawans had of their superior officers. The new Army Chief has his work cut out for him and requires like Hercules cleaning up the Aegean stables to get into his shirtsleeves and wallow in the muck and filth created by his predecessors and get rid of it as fast as possible.

Sharad Pawar For Traders Under Guise Of Supporting Farmers

Sharad Pawar has been advocating exports of agricultural commodities like sugar and cotton which essentially is not a bad thing. But what we need is a consistent long term policy on this and we cannot have knee jerk initiatives like now which benefits first traders and then farmers. Currently we have been recording bumper harvests for three years in a row and have surplus foodgrains for which having no place to store, it is rotting in the open. In such a situation exporting the grain makes sense after we have supplied the States their needs for the PDS. We also have to remember that climate change has impacted crops across the world including China in the last few years and India luckily has been an exception. But this situation is not likely to last long and climate change will take its toll on us also. This risk factor we have to include in our export policy. Again essentially our food should go to our people which is not happening with a creaking and squeaky PDS which is more known for its leakages to the trader community than guaranteeing food for the targeted people particularly the shortage situation in rural and tribal areas is very severe. Thus for the States why are we not just giving them the PDS quotas without insisting on payment and maybe just charge them transportation so that food can be reached to the intended hungry mouths is something that is not understood. In the papers recently we had Maharasthra and West Bengal claiming that the PDS supplies are low by close to 50% of allocation and they had no funds to pick up allotted stocks. The other States position would also be similar, one thinks. The above strategy will at least move out grain stocks to where it can be stored properly and progressively given to the people. The latest brain wave from Sharad Pawar is that MNREGA wages will be paid by way of foodgrains. On paper this sounds a great idea but it is essentially to pave the way for legitimate withdrawal of grain from government stocks and divert it to traders. When the regular PDS is unable to reach the grain to the fair price shops, will the foodgrains reach particularly the rural and tribal areas to be paid as wages under the MNREGA? Why do we also think even now that the poor and tribals eat only grain since do they not need some amount of money to buy other essential things that they need which they can do if their wages are paid in cash? These are some of the fallacies in Sharad Pawar’s proposal which apparently looks great but hoodwinks both the government and the poor people and fills up traders pockets.

The Doublespeak on Iran by our Foreign Ministry

The doublespeak on Iran by our foreign policy establishment is stunning. We are clearly succumbing to the pressure put on us by the US which was even reiterated during Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s recent visit to India. The public position as expressed by Foreign Minister S M Krishna is that we are holding fort on Iran and will not forsake our traditional cultural and economic ties. While what is fact is that India has cut down its purchases of oil from Iran and has also temporarily shut down the Mangalore Refineries & Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL) at Mangalore which was the recipient of the larger portion of Iranian crude. Here also there is doublespeak with MRPL ostensibly having been ‘shut down’ last month due to water shortage which has been acute in the coastal city but in any case MRPL would have been shut down by now considering that supplies of Iranian crude had been disrupted. As for the US pressure, following on the heels of Hilary Clinton’s visit there is a high level US delegation here to support India on how it can still cut down its dependence on Iranian crude. The Iranian crude as far as one knows is low-sulphur light crude which is specifically suitable for refineries like MRPL which in fact was built to handle just Iranian crude along with the Kudremukh iron ore extraction and pelletisation plant which sadly is wound up now. The same fate seems likely for MRPL. Thus the US delegation as mentioned earlier is to sell additional equipment and technology to make Indian refineries like MRPL ‘flexible’ to handle other crude. Thus the US is a business delegation! It is true that with sanctions being imposed on Iran the payment for crude oil from that country will now be in Indian Rupees and to utilize the Rupee currency there is currently also a business delegation from Iran to examine what additional products or services can be imported from India. These are all good signs but there is a certain limit to which Indian exports to Iran can increase. But the principle that two essentially friendly countries whose links go back far in time are looking at increasing their trade on the back of pressure from a third country like the US is telling a rather sad story about the strength of will and firmness of resolve of both countries, India and Iran, particularly India. India should have stood firm and secured the right for Iran to pursue peaceful use of nuclear energy which in any case the US is pursuing in back-channel talks with Iran. And if these talks are successful then India will toe the US line and do as told while if it had held firm then India would have had more of an influence in, as said earlier, the right for Iran to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Would that not have been a foreign policy coup of sorts for India?

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VOX POPULI by Aam Admi

Issue: 112

Date: 12.05.2012

Contents:

1. Of Sense Of Humour & Buying Peerages

2. Uniform Compensation & Hostage Exchange Policy

3. Shooting In The Dark On Economic Policies

4. Gaddhafi Turns In His Grave and Smiles!

5. Japan Cleans Itself Of Nuclear Energy

6. Cheaper To Store Grain & Have People Starve

7. The Taliban Is Growing Stronger & The US Wiser

8. PM Needs More Dead To Visit Dhubri Boat Accident Site?

9. Recover Excess Money For Her Relatives Foreign Trips From Pratibha Patil

Of Sense Of Humour & Buying Peerages

In your Sunday Express of 6th May 2012 Meghnad Desai in his column is extolling the UK media in terms of their lampooning the parliamentarians in that country while at the same time complimenting the sense of humour of those being made fun of who show tolerance for the media’s cartoons or whatever. Desai contrasts the situation in India where we have many ‘holy cows’ and people in high positions particularly those in politics take umbrage of their cartoons in the media or similar instances of being made fun of. This was evident lately in the case of Mamta Banerji, the Chief Minister of West Bengal who had hauled up those who had put up matter inimical to her like cartoons on the Internet. What Desai fails to realize is that being made fun of, cartoons, sense of humour and the like is a reflection of a society’s mores and values which is in a broad sense represented by its culture. Therefore what is done by or followed in the UK is not relevant here. That essentially is the spirit of diversity of opinion and feelings is what Desai should realize. Specific to the media the UK scandals involving Rupert Murdoch and the hacking of phones by his paper the News of the World (NOTW) since closed is something that will never happen in India. Random hacking of phones of celebrities to extract content down to a teenage girl who killed herself as purportedly done by NOTW cannot be conceived as representative of any civilized society. And if the NOTW is being missed which was noted in carrying such scurrilous content, it talks of a malaise in UK society which is very much deeply rooted. Thus Desai should follow the ‘live and let live’ or ‘each to his own’ philosophy. It is also natural that Desai having stayed in the UK for long should be true to his salt and their having given him a peerage obliges him more though there were also scandals in the UK that most Asian peerages were ‘bought’.

Uniform Compensation & Hostage Exchange Policy

The compensation policy for accident victims needs to be made uniform. Like in the recent Dhubri boat disaster in Assam a compensation of Rs. 2 Lakhs was declared for those who died while in the last Railway accident the amount given for those who died was Rs. 50,000/-. In the same manner those who died in terror attacks in our metropolitan cities were paid much more. When lives lost have the same impact on their near families one cannot understand why the compensation should vary and all over India there should be a uniform policy announced so that people do not feel mistreated. In the same manner like the Chattisgarh CM, Raman Singh has asked for the hostage rescue policy in exchange for prisoners should also be made uniform. Considering that this is a sensitive matter there is need for not making this public but given as a guideline to the State Chief Ministers and the seniormost police personnel in the State. Otherwise we end up like now with Alex Paul Menon’s case where upon his release there is politics being played out on the issue. This will only encourage the Maoists and terrorists to play around with us in hostage situations complicating matters. In the case of hostages, we should follow a ‘no-exchange’ policy for the perpetrator organizations prisoners who are in our jails and awaiting judicial process. But if we are to decide upon a ‘hostage for prisoners’ policy, then it should be uniform across India.

Shooting In The Dark On Economic Policies

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji’s rollback of the excise duty on jewelry & TDS applicable on sale deeds as also pushing out GAAR by one year are typical of the maladies which have been haunting this government and that is not knowing what it is doing and why. Thus you have almost by public clamour or specific interest groups a number of measures that are inserted and then randomly one or the other is withdrawn. The sad part is that some of the obviously erroneous measures in this process gets overlooked and they remain hurting the economy. In the process of withdrawing or rolling back a measure the government wants to give themselves the credit of being responsive and sympathetic to people’s needs which actually it is not. This is just a ploy to conceal their obvious inefficiency and stupidity. This is precisely the reason why the Indian economy is going nowhere currently. The last figures for exports show a slump and the government is again thrashing around to find out why. Pranab Mukherji’s contention that everybody is doing badly and compared to that we are doing better is sounding like an undergraduate talking about his Grade Point Average where every student hopes that the other guy has done worse than him but that rarely happens. So also when comparing with the West Pranab Mukherji should remember the levels of their economies and that of ours. We are less geared to face shocks than they are and with our large population that is close to the poverty line, the impact could be a matter of life and death.

Gaddhafi Turns In His Grave and Smiles!

Gaddhafi turns in his grave and smiles upon hearing that Sarkozy has lost the French Presidential elections. The same had happened with Tony Blair who lost the Prime Ministership and had to surrender his government to the Conservatives and the LibDem coalition in the elections held just after Saddam Hussein’s execution in Iraq. At that time Saddam had given a wry smile in his grave, now it is Gadhaffi’s turn. Though George W Bush won his second term based upon his launching of the military campaigns in Iraq & Afghanistan and pursuing the Al Qaeda, he would not have possibly won a third term, if it was allowed under the US Constitution. Thus the legacy issues of these campaigns in terms of their being one of the contributing issues to the economic slowdown in the US had to be faced by Barrack Obama. It is for precisely this reason that President Obama’s first term has been lackluster. The message in all this is that the West’s leaders should more concentrate on home issues rather than start riding posse around the world with the intention to reform it. Put your home in order first is the old adage which has come true to those leaders in Europe who were at the forefront of military adventurism.

Japan Cleans Itself Of Nuclear Energy

With the shutting down for maintenance for a period of 60 days of the last of the nuclear power plants, Japan became nuclear energy free last week. This was a day of celebration for the Japanese activists who have been campaigning for this for quite some time. Going into the summer Japan knows it will have problems relating to power and the people there are preparing to face power cuts and the like. But at the same time they are firm on their resolve that they cannot afford to have another Fukushima type disaster which is still spewing radiation into the air and into the sea. This approach of wanting to become a nuclear free nation by Japan and earlier Germany as also the resolve of Italy in this regard needs to be lauded. It is rather unfortunate that we do not see India sharing this philosophy in spite of having such a large land mass compared to these named countries and also endowed with much more natural resources. Echoing the PMO, Ms Jayalalithaa, the Tamil Nadu CM has said recently that in a week’s time the Kudankulam NPP will go on stream. It is clear that she has been bought with the promise of some 500MW of power from the Kudankulam NPP going into the summer with Tamil Nadu facing acute shortages of power. Sacrificing people’s interest for short term gains like this is a common enough political position in India. In addition Srikumar Banerji, the erstwhile head of the Atomic Energy Commission has also commented that India cannot do without nuclear energy. Such comments are clearly not sustainable by Banerji or Kakodkar or anyone for that matter from within the atomic energy fraternity since they have an obvious axe to grind in this matter. What they should do is to put up their case and then let our policy planners put it up through Parliament for approval. It is unfortunate that clear and open debate is something which does not happen in our country and it is ruled by vested interests of different kinds and in the end it is the poor common man who suffers. It is time we changed all this.

Cheaper To Store Grain & Have People Starve

With bumper harvests grain storage has become a big issue now. To compound the physical problem of space there is the additional financial issue that the MSP being higher than the PDS price, the grain stored cannot be moved out since it is costly to do so. In Haryana & Punjab where the grain is stored in temporary tents/ ‘kutcha’ plinths, it has already started rotting. Also Haryana has recommended that the 3 year old grain in the stocks needs to be mixed with fresh grain and disposed off. These surely are the problems of plenty. It is thus clear that we can neither handle famine and starvation nor a surplus in food stocks and have to shut it away in godowns. This while many parts of the country are near starvation and the poor eat only one meal a day and 60% of the country manages at Rs. 35/- per day according to the latest survey of the NSSO. Thus the dilemma created of having to further subsidise the grain is another one of those economic measures that are being done by this government which are inflationary and are essentially being created to feed the yawning budget deficit. It is time that this government took drastic measures and allowed market forces to take over. It will have severe implications on the economy but it is well worth the risk. In the long term this will reduce the size of this government and thus the deficit. The ‘fiddle here - fiddle there’ economic policies is getting us nowhere and leaving the Indian economy swathed in bandages and fix-it plasters in the manner of the Unknown Soldier in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 who had only the 3 orifices open, one for input and the other two for output and was recumbent on the hospital bed with one leg strapped up high on a brace. That is the condition of India under world renowned economists like Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Kaushik Basu!

The Taliban Is Growing Stronger & The US Wiser

The Taliban strike in Kabul once again hours after Barrack Obama had left upon completion of his secret visit to commemorate the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s killing and to sign a 10 year pact post-2014 withdrawal of the US force in Afghanistan, is yet another clear sign that the Taliban is active, resourceful and still capable to target and attack at will. The US has been lately talking that the Al Qaeda organization is on its last legs but refuse to be drawn into a comment on the strength of the Taliban. This essentially is the tacit acceptance that once they leave in 2014, the US does not much care for what will happen in Afghanistan. This is also the message coming out of Barrack Obama‘s latest speech on the Presidential campaign trial about extracting the US from the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the US’ late realization that the money spent on wars abroad in the current context of its economy could be better spent at home to come out of recession, create more new jobs and stimulate recovery. It is a very costly exercise to convince the US policy planners about avoiding unnecessary wars and they seem to wake up only after trillions of dollars have gone down the drain in the conflict countries. The problem in this whole thing is the tendency of Western planners to involve themselves into computerized game theory kind of exercises which time and again has proved that the results that the West expects to obtain are lost in the probability cracks or what is called in the wrong throw of the dice. Time to change, saves you dollars, lives and helps spend resources on much needed improvements at home.

PM Needs More Dead To Visit Dhubri Boat Accident Site?

There was a massive boat disaster in Assam at Dhubri last week with some 100 dead and many more missing. Manmohan Singh has been elected from Assam to the Rajya Sabha but he did not find it fit to visit the accident site nor meet those in hospital after being rescued. Why was this? Is 100 people dying in an accident not justify a PM’s visit to express commiseration? Or is the scale of dead higher for a PM to visit? Manmohan Singh has rarely visited any accident or terror site during his two tenures and therefore lacks the touch with the common citizens. In the Dhubri incident he thought fit to depute Rahul Gandhi. Is this part of the build-up of the Gandhi family scion to occupy the PM’s chair but then if we go by track record the UP Assembly elections do not support this story.

Recover Excess Money For Her Relatives Foreign Trips From Pratibha Patil

Pratibha Patil through her PR advisor has tried to explain her foreign jaunts with accompanying relatives being justified saying it is a practice done by everbody like President Clinton bringing his daughter, Chelsea to India etc. This is completely irrelevant since what the US & other countries do, there is no need for us to emulate it. What is the level of the economy as far as the US is concerned and where are we? Even if Pratibha Patil is invoking the precedent of past Presidents, why does she not compare her foreign jaunts with relatives to that of her immediate predecessor, Abdul Kalam. Apart from that should we not set examples not necessarily of austerity but of frugality? If Pratibha Patil had set an example in this regard, then people would have appreciated her and remembered her for it. In any case, what should be done now is to recover the money from Pratibha Patil for all excess family members than one male and one female member who traveled with her during her tenure as President. Thus a reasonable part of the Rs. 205 crore spent on her foreign jaunts will come back to the exchequer.

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VOX POPULI by Aam Admi

Issue: 111

Date: 05.05.2012

Contents:

1.Sachin & Others Nomination To The Rajya Sabha

2. Going Soft On The Maoists

3. Pratibha Patil: A Discordant President

4. The Govt.'s Revenue Panic Mindset

5. The West’s Neo-Con Strategy Is Not Working

Sachin & Others Nomination To The Rajya Sabha

The Sachin Tendulkar and the Rekha nomination to the Rajya Sabha is another major joke played on the nation by the Congress and the incumbent UPA-2 government. As it is it is well known that with RTE or not, every single party in this country to protect its vote banks would like to see that education does not spread to every single citizen. The reason for this is that there is a vested interest in keeping the electorate illiterate and lesser informed since only then vote banks can be created and cultivated. When you educate people, they start asking questions and this is what our politicians and political parties do not like. Thus nominating Sachin & Rekha to the Rajya Sabha is part of this strategy to stuff the Parliament with relatively pliable people who will not be able to think for themselves. There have also been many comments in the media whether Sachin will be able to do justice to his role upon being nominated to the Rajya Sabha. That also is something that Sachin is used to since look at the pithy condition his IPL team, the Mumbai Indians are in the competition. Their disastrous performance has been because of waiting for Sachin to become fit and hence not being able to arrive at a winning combination from their bench strength. The suspense about Sachin’s fitness has been killing the new captain Harbhajan Singh (Bhajji) who wakes up on match day every time, praying that Sachin should firstly, be fit and secondly, decide to play. This inability to give an assured place to some of the other contenders, mostly youngsters, for Sachin’s slot in the batting line-up is not doing anything good for their game, mental peace and temperament. In fact, Rahul Dravid has done much better than Sachin in the current edition of the IPL and that too only after retirement. Maybe for once Sachin should follow Dravid’s example! Sachin’s availability issue is what has been dogging the India Test and ODI teams and see where it has got the country in terms of performance and international rankings in cricket during the last year or so. Thus it is time for Sachin to listen to his creaking bones and body (sometimes it is the elbow, sometimes it is the toe) and gracefully retire from competitive cricket and take on the role of Player Emeritus and concentrate on his other interests. Will he listen? That is likely to be rare since who has listened when told to retire at the peak of their careers? Did Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev or Saurav Ganguly go on their own, not so, until they were literally booted if not shamed out.

Going Soft On The Maoists

Exchanging Maoist prisoners for kidnapped officials and politicians has to stop. This is an easy way out for the government on the plea of public outcry and being sympathetic to the kidnapped person’s family. The more difficult is to work towards rescuing the kidnapped and in that process conveying to the Maoists or the kidnappers in other instances that the government will not take these things lying down. At the same time utmost caution has to be exercised that the kidnapped are not injured or killed in the rescue attempt. In the case of the District Collector, Alex Paul Menon in Sukma of Chattisgarh, newspapers reported that they had located Menon to within 500 meters radius in the forest. Even then there were no attempts to launch a rescue though one is not clear as to what kind of terrain was involved. The attempts being made were more of a conciliatory nature of reaching the medicines to Menon and stopping the anti-Maoist drive in Bastar as demanded by the Maoists. As said earlier these do not talk of a strong State and we in this process are encouraging more such instances until all Maoists and/or terrorists are freed from our jails and thus not go through the punishment process. Another aspect that is being highlighted in this case is that people like Menon at the level of an IAS should be aware of what risks to take and walking into a situation like he did which put him in the position of an easy kidnap victim should have been avoided. If IAS officers are not situation conscious then how can we expect this from other people down the line. And after falling into the hands of the Maoists, saying that he is an asthma patient and cannot stay long without his medicine or that his wife is pregnant or his aged father is concerned about him are all media bytes which convey no meaning and should not attract any sympathy. The Maoists have already control of a large swathe running through the middle of India running north-eastwards all the way up to Nepal called the ‘Red Corridor’ which footprint will keep increasing and the audacity of these anti-national people will grow by leaps and bounds unless they are not effectively tackled both by political and/or appropriate force. There are issues of development in this ‘Red Corridor’ no doubt but even then we should not let the Maoists take the law into their own hands and dictate terms to us.

Pratibha Patil: A Discordant President

Pratibha Patil’s making a big splash on not going in for the palatial construction for her post-retirement home in Pune is typical of our politicians and the powers-that-be reaction once they are caught red-handed. The first thing that they try to do is to deny any association with the particular issue. This is assuming that the matter would die down by itself. If it does not like we saw recently in Maharasthra in land deals with people like Vilasrao Deshmukh, the ex-CM Chavan, Kripashankar Singh, Chagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane and others who all insisted that everything including allotment of land at throwaway prices was according to government’s rules and regulations. The fact that all this was done because of the positions of privilege that they enjoyed is not lost on anybody. If the matters prolong and public outcry sustains they resort to what Pratibha Patil has done return the land or whatever and back out of the situation covering themselves with the glow of compassion that they are sacrificing their interests in the cause of the greater good. This curse of using influence of high office to get undue favours has also touched some of the most upright officials of this land. Shri T K A Nair, the erstwhile Secretary to the PM, who was regarded as an extremely capable and honest person throughout his career is now touched with the taint of having been involved in the out of turn allotment of some housing plots in a BEML cooperative in Bengaluru to his extended family members who were not even employees of BEML to be eligible for allotment. Thus it is the environment around us where people find everybody doing it so they then have to ask themselves, why not me? And thus they also take the plunge. In this context let us look at Pratibha Patil returning the land of some 2.6 sq. lakh meters and the construction in progress of a house with a plinth of 4,500 sq. meters. Firstly, does our President not know that there is a tremendous shortage of land in all our urban centres like Pune which has sent prices of land and houses through the roof. So from a position of privilege why should she have sought land of 2.6 sq. lakh meters for her ‘retirement home’? What is she going to do with so much land? Though when the first outcry surfaced she did say that upon her death the land would revert to the military to whom the land originally belongs. But even seeking 2.6 sq. lakh meters, such a vast tract of land is mindboggingly stupid since as now reported she says she was not aware that our jawans and others related to the military have scarce accommodation. If a President does not know this there is clearly something wrong with our system or it is an issue with Pratibha Patil that she will only see what she wants to see. Secondly, the size of the house with a plinth of 4,500 sq. meters, why is this required? This is huge by any standards and where a country has 63% of its people below the poverty line (which position of the line is also debated for the convenience of our policy planners), should the President not make do with more frugal accommodation. Or after spending so many years in politics and working at the grassroots, as she has claimed, has she forgotten about our poor by spending the last 5 years in Rasthrapati Bhawan? These are all stunning stupidities which these people in positions of power try to see whether they can get away with. Now what will happen to the partially constructed house on the Pune land for the President. All that money spent on that up till now will go down the drain. So should not have better sense prevailed and Pratibha Patil stopped it in the first instance so that money could be saved. There is no denying that we should give our retiring Heads of State and/or Government accommodation but if they opt for it, they should realize that it will be frugal in their sense but comfortable and plush in the context of what an aam admi can get. Thus Pratibha Patil should be given at any place of her choice and locality of her choice, a 3 bedroom flat of not more than 1800 sq. feet on the ground floor considering her age. If she does not want it then she can stay in her own accommodation and on the pension that she will get from the government. Nothing more should be given and these people should have a sense of shame to ask for anything more. On Pratibha Patil again about her foreign tours costing Rs. 205 crores to the exchequer, she has said that these are decided by the government and are for the sake of India’s foreign policy. This is all right but the number of family members accompanying her is decided by her. Thus while she is entitled to one male family member in the event of her husband unable to travel for any reason and another female family member to keep her company, should she not have offered to pay for the rest of the family members at her expense. This is what an enlightened and conscious President would have done. With this let Pratibha Patil rest in peace. She has insulted the high office of the President by her latest action and is a slight on her considering the simple living and high thinking philosophies of our first Presidents like Rajendra Prasad and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and following in the footsteps of the previous President Abdul Kalam who also set high standards of austere and simple living (but for his hairstyle!).

The Govt.'s Revenue Panic Mindset

The new 2G auction rates set up by TRAI are exceedingly high expecting to fetch the government about Rs. 7 Lakh crore, nearly seven times more than that the Rs. 1.04 Lakh crore than it had received through the auction of the 3G spectrum in 2010. This means mobile calls will become more expensive. The very concept of communication being essential on the back of which the mobile revolution has taken off in India is likely to be negated. This government anticipating a financial crisis with a burgeoning and unmanageable deficit is desperately flailing to raise revenue in any which way without considering its impact on the common man. Therefore every official is trying to compete with the other on showing how much more that they can squeeze out of each policy initiative. This attitude needs to be curtailed and a calm, contained plan evolved on a long term basis on each and every policy initiative to manage the Indian economy. The auctioning virus has also affected the Supreme Court who sent out an advice that natural resources should also be auctioned in the wake of the coal scam. This then raised comment whether water would also be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder! Thus we have to get out of this revenue panic mindset that our policy planners are getting into since then over a period of time there will be no more common citizens in India because most of them would have met an unfortunate end. India would then be left with lopsided thinking policy planners and the rich and affluent.

The West’s Neo-Con Strategy Is Not Working

The British bit the dust in Afghanistan in the early 20th century, the Russians met their nemesis again in the same country in the middle of the 20th century at the hands of the tribal warlords resulting in the withdrawal of the Russians and the ushering in off the Taliban shortly thereafter and finally now it is the turn of the Americans to pack their bags and return earlier than 2014 as it is being said, and leaving Afghanistan in more or less the same position as it was when they came to uproot the Taliban and eliminate Osama Bin Laden. Afghanistan is a difficult war zone what with the terrain but one must give credit to their tribal fighters who would rather die than be called cowards and surrender. The premise as above about the American predicament is borne to be correct from the latest 18 hour raid by the Taliban in the heart of Kabul which led to some 48 people dead. But by attacking the Parliament and the embassies of some NATO countries in the heart of the ‘safe’ zone in Kabul the Taliban have more than proved their point about their resurgence. Additionally many of the Afghans who can afford to leave the country have been moving out over the last year migrating to the West and others countries as also sending their available capital abroad in anticipation of the Taliban’s return once the US troop presence is withdrawn. What this signifies is that people have little confidence in the government of Hamid Karzai, the incumbent President who during the above recent Taliban raid was ‘imprisoned’ in his palace by his own. But post-2014 his captors could be the Taliban! Recently an Australian minister had made a comment that Karzai is a weak and ineffective leader. This has been in fact the tradition of the West which was followed first in the Middle East & Gulf region by the US by supporting Chalabi in Iraq who milked dry the US dollar until he fell out with the US. Surprise of surprises he could not even win an election in his native country and is now relatively unknown. But then Chalabi has no worries since his dollar pile will suffice him and another three of his succeeding generations. This has been the US practice of supporting particular expatriates who make appropriate noises about freedom and democracy which opens up the treasury of the US Dollar to them. Karzai is no different from this breed and presides over a government which plays favorites and oversees a surge in poppy cultivation leading to enhanced production of opium and downstream cocaine. In this Karzai is no different than the Taliban who also encourage poppy production for the ready cash it fetches them. Thus the second objective of the US and NATO to come into Afghanistan which was to eliminate poppy production has been completely negated. Karzai’s only credentials for remaining in office is to ensure the continued flow of foreign aid which would be put in jeopardy in the event of a new Afghan leader emerging on the scene. The problem other than this in Afghanistan is the use of drones by the US to kill the Taliban and terrorists which has caused a massive number of innocent civilian casualties. This has resulted in the loss of public support for the US and NATO forces and also led to reprisals against them. These reprisals have lately been in secure installations and of senior US and NATO personnel by people dressed as Afghan soldiers or the Afghan soldiers themselves. Similar incidents have been reported from among the Afghan police. This shows the extent that the Afghan military and police forces have been infiltrated and compromised. The major incident in this regard lately was when a Afghan suicide bomber in army fatigues blew himself up in close proximity of an airline fuel tanker at an airfield minutes before Defence Secretary Panetta was landing at the Bagram air base outside Kabul. In the same vein open any paper and you will see bomb blasts in the swathe of countries ranging from Pakistan to Iraq and from cities like Lahore to Aden to the Gaza strip to Baghdad and now further in Damascus and Homs. The sporadic blasts in northern Africa have quietened down with the Arab Spring giving way to the long drawn out Arab Winter with the militia taking charge in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In places like Egypt where elections were held the fundamentalist Islamic parties got the majority of the vote and over time these other countries are expected to follow suit. Thus the US & West has presided over or will be presiding over the progressive Talibanisation of the Islamic countries in this region. Thus the West has replaced one brand of authoritarian rule by another. Thus the policy to infuse democracy in the region has been negated and the position has been to return to Square One. The blasts which go off with unfailing regularity in this region are done by people who are inimical to the presence of soldiers of the US & other Western nations and are linked to the Taliban or Al Qaeda or home grown outfits fighting hostile incumbent governments with the implicit help of the West. This is good strategy for the US & West to keep these hostile people busy with killing people of their own kind, in their own land thus containing the terror in the originating countries little realizing that this has come at a tremendous cost to the civilian population in these countries. The Western world is thus relatively safe from terror attacks. In addition what the Western scientists and intelligentsia would extol as the cradle of civilization extending over Iraq, Iran and now Syria is now being destroyed systematically in all the mayhem and violence that the West has caused or engendered for the last 20 years in this region. Thus is the West contributing to the preservation of the history and culture of mankind? There is also a certain duplicity in the manner of how the Western media, both TV and print, and incumbent governments deal with protests. When any insignificant person in any of the strife-torn countries as named above raises his voice for freedom and democracy, his or her story is splashed across the Western media and you have appropriately correct noises being made by the foreign policy departments of the Western nations. But when protests occur in the West like against the Bush/Blair duos misadventure into Afghanistan & Iraq, or against climate change or against trade policies, these protests are not recognized as the voices seeking to dissent or for the cause of freedom or to express themselves in an active and lively democracy. These protests are severely put down by water cannon, or with policemen caning the protestors or even using rubber bullets against them. Thus if Assad or the late Gadhafi tried to stifle protest and dissent in the same manner, why were they painted black and branded as despots? Is this not double standards? The same situation of equity in looking at issues is not done in the case of Israel’s unauthorized nuclear program and possessing nuclear weapons in the explosive Gulf & Middle East region but Iran’s nuclear program is condemned, castigated and sanctions imposed on the hapless country for doing exactly the same thing as Israel. And Iran happens to be an older country and having contributed to this world’s civilization much more than Israel can ever can. Thus by the same yardstick Israel’s nuclear program needs to be condemned and sanctions imposed upon them unless they open up their nuclear facilities to the IAEA. The West particularly the US also has to advise Israel to curb their military adventurism in the region and stop making public statements about their planned pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and other countries of the region for other small provocations. This kind of military action will jeopardize the chance for peace to come to this region.. Thus the Western world and the US have clearly lost their way in the quagmire of Islam over the last two or three decades and it is time that they left the Islamic countries around the world on their own either to self-destruct or develop into liberal regimes recognizing human rights and only then welcome them into the league of nations as honorable members.

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VOX POPULI by Aam Admi

Issue: 109

Date: 21.04.2012

Contents:

1. Subhash Ghai's Confusion

2. Sharad Pawar: The Champion of Farmers!

3. Rahul Gandhi's Genealogy

4. Sharad Pawar - The ‘Bheegi Billi’ in Delhi

5. Bengal's Image At Stake

6. India’s Foreign Policy In A Shambles

Subhash Ghai's Confusion

The Subhash Ghai & his Whistling Woods acting school issue of the land he got in Goregaon in which Vilasrao Deshmukh, the then CM has been shown to be complicit is representative of the deeper rot of corruption that is part of the body politic particularly of the Congress party today. People like Subhash Ghai are no babe in the woods and consort with politicians for obtaining precisely these kind of favours and once caught in the act, play holier than thou. Thus we should not listen to people like him since for a similar land allocation issue again for his Whistling Woods acting school he has been hauled up again in Andhra Pradesh. The adage of the thief not giving up but striking again with the same modus operandi thus becomes true once again. Therefore people from the film fraternity like Shabana Azmi and Govind Nihalani whom people of this nation respect should not get involved in these controversies. Subhash Ghai has created the problem and therefore let him fend for himself. He has also been bluffing that he can easily move the acting school into new premises in Mumbai. Then what is he waiting for? Is the stricture of the Supreme Court not enough? Let him vacate the existing land immediately. He has also been lately canvassing for support from politicians of various hues claiming that he can prove that he is innocent of complicity in the land allotment. Then for a man of his resources why could he not get the best lawyers and do it before the High Court and then the Supreme Court to clear his name. A clear case of bad judgment or crying now after the milk has been spilt.

Sharad Pawar: The Champion of Farmers!

Sharad Pawar currently championing the ‘cause’ of farmers in the case of pursuing cotton and sugar exports has also the ‘credit’ of having the largest number of farmer suicides during his continuing tenure as Agriculture Minister. In cotton, the export benefits the traders lobby through whom exports are done. Pawar’s logic that banning exports helps the cotton mill owners among which the government also figures as a large owner through NTC is not understood. This is the existing system which has been going on and should domestic cotton mill owners not get their requirements locally? Is the need to clothe our own people not important? If there had to be a change could Sharad Pawar not have initiated it early enough so that a proper application of mind was possible. The hurry to allow cotton exports to resume smacks of underhand dealings with the cotton export trade lobby. The same is also true for sugar exports where despite the Commerce & Food Ministries following the guidelines set up by Pawar himself while he was heading the Food ministry and surprisingly now he himself is finding fault with it now. If the EGOM decision on sugar exports policy changes are not notified then what Pawar has to do is until then to follow the present rule until the new one comes into force. Here again Pawar is blaming the Shipping & Ports ministry since per his estimates Indian ports can handle only 3 lakh tones of sugar exports in a month and therefore the currently approved 3 Million tonnes of sugar exports will take 10 months by which time another harvest would have come in. The questions that begs asking by the common citizen is that inspite of all this surplus sugar in the godowns why is the price of sugar not coming down? There are also reports given the massive foodgrain stocks in our godowns far exceeding the recommended buffer stock of 30 million tones, the government is thinking of distributing these stocks in lieu of wages for the MNREGA program. On this again Sharad Pawar has got together with Food Minister Thomas when they rarely see eye to eye since Pawar quit the Food ministry which is a good idea. But it is bound to create a mess under the public distribution program where BPL and APL families are supposed to get subsidized foodgrains. There are two other problems with this idea. First, we were all told that the public distribution system is not able to reach the rural areas with any degree of regularity. So how would the grain payments under the MNREGA program reach the beneficiaries? If it is through the same leaky public distribution system or a separate network then it is yet another harebrained scheme to benefit vested interests and for traders to hijack these stocks easily. Secondly, the MNREGA program beneficiaries cannot live with grains alone and that is where the wages they get would have got, enabled them to buy other things that they need like edible oil, salt etc. The payment by foodgrains for MNREGA program beneficiaries is ostensibly since our FCI and other food godowns are full and with the new harvest coming in there is no place to keep the grains before the next monsoon sets in. Did we not know this for the last 3 years since when we have been talking of limited godown storage capacity and grains rotting everywhere inside godowns and what is stored in the open? If so, why were no arrangements made to build warehouses or at least temporary shelters in this period? Why are these ministers coming up with these brilliant suggestions just a couple of months before the monsoon sets in? Is it to take shelter under the standard recourse – I told you so, when the problem really sets in? When will our ministers learn to take action in time.

Rahul Gandhi's Genealogy

One of the national papers reported on the review by the Congress party of its debacle in the UP Assembly elections as - Matters came to an interesting point during a recent review meeting when the upper caste/Brahmin argument was invoked by a local UP leader saw Congress leader Rahul Gandhi rebutting the claim by remarking "I am a Brahmin...and general secretary in the party." Correction according to genealogy, Rahul Gandhi is ½ Italian and only ¼ of a Brahmin while the remaining ¼ is Parsi.

Sharad Pawar - The ‘Bheegi Billi’ in Delhi

Sharad Pawar had recently criticized CM Prithviraj Chavan in Mumbai for his ‘bhakri’ lunch with villagers stating that having just one lunch does not help one become aware of farmers problems. But what should be seen is that the CM has at least made a start to evolve an informal consultation with villagers. Sharad Pawar has been Agriculture Minister for donkey’s years, how many times has he had a meal with the villagers? One hand should be probably enough to count this number. Surprisingly in the lead-up to the UP Assembly elections when Rahul Gandhi was spending some nights in the houses of UP Vilagers mostly Dalits and sharing meals with them, there was nary a peep from Sharad Pawar on this. Back in Maharasthra he is roaring for the same matter against the incumbent CM. Talk of being a ‘bheegi billi – wet cat’ in Delhi and a lion in his home State.

Bengal's Image At Stake

Mamta Banerji is making a mess of governance in West Bengal. Not realizing that the people of that State have sent her to Writer’s Building after throwing out 34 years of Communist rule is a God-sent opportunity to her and the TMC, she is squandering all the goodwill that she has received until now. She keeps mouthing the words – ‘34 years of Communist rule’ but uses it to justify her misrule and excesses. Her party members have blatantly said that for the 34 years we suffered, we will extract our revenge. Otherwise why should babies continue to die in State Govt. hospitals, women continue to get raped and random fires continue to happen. The latest is the needless persecution of Prof Mahapatra of Jadavpur University for an assumed insult where there is nothing of the kind. The moment Mamta Banerji became aware of the incident she should have diffused and doused it from getting adverse publicity. She is a woman of letters and claims to be a poet which requires her to take a broader view of things. She has also been a long-time politician where it is expected that she have a sense of humour which she has also exhibited at times in the many Railway Budgets she has presented. All this seems to have left her once she climbed into the CM’s chair in Writer’s Building. Also the transfer of the lady Addl. Commissioner (Crime) who in spite of Mamta Banerji’s utterances to the contrary proved that the woman in the Park street case was indeed accosted and raped in a moving car by people who used false identities. Being quick in judgment is a virtue but it has its pitfalls in the sense that at some times the decisions may be erroneous. That is where a quiet moment of reflection is required. This is something that Mamta Banerji should learn and learn quickly. It is still not late and though she may have disenchanted the intelligentsia in Bengal, she has still not alienated them. Therefore what she should do now is to withdraw the case against Prof Mahapatra, reprimand her goons who attacked him and the other elderly man of the housing society and assure the victims and their families security of life and limb. In these incidents it is not only Mamta Banerji and the TMC’s image that is at stake but that of Bengal where once upon a time it was considered that it was a land of culture and that women and elderly people were safe compared to the rest of the country.

India’s Foreign Policy In A Shambles

India’s foreign policy is in a shambles. The latest on this was the vote in the UNHRC against Sri Lanka. What a dramatic reversal from the 1980's when Rajiv Gandhi sent the IPKF into Sri Lanka to fight the Tamil rebels (LTTE) and now we vote against a neighbour at the behest of the US. The best thing would have been to abstain. The problem has been that this UPA-2 government led by Manmohan Singh lacks the spine to stand up to its coalition partners, the DMK in this case. Jayalalithaa promptly also jumped onto the Lanka Tamils bandwagon and in a rare moment echoed the DMK’s demand. Sri Lanka has had good relations with us and but for some fishermen issues confused with the Lankan Tamil matter there have been few run-ins with that country in the recent past. Both countries need each other to keep the Indian Ocean a zone of peace. With Maldives liberal government being thrown out in a coup which India could and did little to avoid, we have an Islamic government in the saddle there. Thus exhibiting a disregard for our immediate neighbours and not nuancing our relationships with them, we are risking that we will be ringed by China into whose arms we have literally thrown Sri Lanka. Pakistan’s strongest ally today is China though they have lately been critical of Pakistan for sponsoring terror. Nepal’s Maoists are more comfortable with China than with the strangling hold of India. Thus instead of being afraid of the Chinese Navy’s dominance in the Indian Ocean region with the port of Guadar in Pakistan being developed by them, we have to look at our own foreign policy in throwing our neighbour countries into China’s arms. No amount of taking credit by our Foreign Ministry for the $10 Million bounty announced by the US on the head of Hafiz Saeed, the LeT leader based in Pakistan will take away the reality that on 26/11 our hands have been tied in trying to prove that Pakistan had a hand in it. Not only that we have spent Rs. 18 crore on keeping one of the principal attackers in the 26/11 incident, Ajmal Kasab alive in Mumbai. Talk of wasting good taxpayer’s money on garbage! India has seen a slow but steady erosion of its influence among the SAARC countries. This has led to piquant situations like Sri Lanka now raising an objection to the Kudankulam NPP, though it is some 250 KM. away. These are all reactions to the vote against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC. Even against Iran, India has been blowing hot and cold after the vote against Iran in the IAEA against their nuclear program on the prompting of the US where again India should have abstained. Where China has been outspoken about the US sanctions against Iran and even going to the extent of cautioning the US against unilateral sanctions against third countries, India has been trying to find a place to hide. India is among the countries being arm twisted by the US to reduce dependence on Iranian oil and we seem to be acquiescing to that dictat with MRPL announcing a reduction of close to 40% on receipts of Iranian crude ostensibly on ‘payment issues’. Though India has partly got Iran to accept payments for oil in Indian Rupees and to move more of its trade with India in our currency and expand volumes, these are all in the nature of the threshing of fish once it is out of the water and it is only a matter of time before we toe the US line on Iran because we have not thought of anything better to do. It is time therefore for India to take a stand with some bold initiatives on foreign policy that may come its way in the near future or even recast some of its steadfastly held current positions to retain our prestige in the South Asian region and in the rest of the world.

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